


Burn

by SelkieWife



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, FitzBirch, FitzBirch-Centric, Guilt, Hot Flashes, Hurt/Comfort, Nancy Birch-centric, POV Nancy Birch, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Past Corporal Punishment, Past Flogging, Scars, Shame, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26907127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SelkieWife/pseuds/SelkieWife
Summary: Nancy can't sleep and Isabella soothes her.
Relationships: Nancy Birch/Isabella Fitzwilliam
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25
Collections: Harlots Week 2020





	Burn

**Author's Note:**

> The tragic events of Season 3 are definitely not Nancy's fault at ALL. But I do think that she would blame herself for not being able to better protect Charlotte.
> 
> CW for a description of Nancy's scars on her back.

Nancy couldn’t sleep. It was so hot and she was burning. There was normally still a bit of a chill in the air at this time of year, but Nancy felt sweatier than an old cuffin's ball sack. She desperately needed some air. So she slowly slid out of bed where Isabella still slept sound, well sated from their bit of mischief earlier that night. She quietly unlatched the casement, letting a soothing breeze waft over her. The warm night air was thick with the scent of the flowers from Isabella’s garden below. She tried to inhale their sweet perfume, but every breath felt stolen. Because it wasn’t the flush of midsummer that was searing her through. It was the guilt. 

She had murdered one of Charlotte’s lovers only to tup the other. And now she stood where that sweet girl should be, while Charlotte slept cold in the ground. There was no turning back from that. And yet she couldn’t help herself. Every time she tried to turn away, she found her boots taking her straight back to Isabella’s startlingly beautiful blue eyes and her full, pouting, _taunting_ , lips. Yet it was more than lust between them. Nancy was drawn to her understanding, her empathy. The way she never judged, even when she should. She _should_. For Nancy was not a decent person. If it hadn’t been for her, Charlotte would still be alive. And that was the worst of the despicable secrets she carried in her heart. 

The breeze wasn’t giving much relief and she was still so hot. She had removed her stays earlier in the night, but she didn’t relish the idea of removing her blouse as well, of being completely exposed, even with Isabella asleep. But it is like a bonfire consuming her…

She stealthily began to peel the light fabric from her shoulders and moved to the basin to dab some cool water on her burning skin. She poured some water into the bowl and brought the wet, cold cloth to her neck. She must have sighed too loudly in relief, because she almost jumped out of her skin when she heard Isabella’s soft voice behind her. 

“Oh,” she gasped as she dropped the cloth back into the basin like a thief caught in the act. 

“Here, allow me…” Isabella offered. Her long brown hair was curling around her shoulders as she stood smiling in the moonlight in only her shift.

 _No, no, no!_ She thought desperately as she quickly pulled her chemise back up.

“Nah… no need… I didn’t mean to wake ya,” she began. But Isabella gently took the cloth out of her hand.

“I can’t sleep either. It’s a warm night. Are you having a hot spell?”

“Might be,” Nancy said as Isabella drew nearer with the cold cloth in her hand.

“Please Nan…” Isabella had begun calling her that and Nancy had found that she liked it. “Let me help you cool off. The night is much too hot for clothes,” she said with that bedeviling grin that never failed to both arouse and bewilder Nancy.

Nancy inhaled sharply and dropped her eyes. Isabella has never pushed her in any way. She has never insisted on seeing her body. Ever since Isabella stole that first kiss, she has been so careful never to overstep. And she seemed to understand Nancy’s aversion to being touched, her need to always be in control. She seemed to accept Nancy’s way of finding her own release by bringing Isabella’s to hers. How just the _sight_ of Isabella, undone and crumbling under her hands brought her the greatest possible pleasure. Very occasionally she had begun to feel comfortable enough to take Isabella’s hand in her own and lead her to stroke against her groin just so… but she always kept her breeches on. She was always clothed, protected. 

And now, Isabella asked to assist her, to give her some relief. It had nothing to do with tupping and yet... to reveal herself to Isabella, to expose herself, her scars… it was a hard line she had never been willing to cross, not even with Mags. Isabella moved closer to her, her luminous eyes boring straight through to Nancy’s soul. 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. You don’t ever have to,” she reassured her.

But Nancy did want to. Or at least, she wanted to want to. The flush of heat has spread throughout her upper body and reached her face making her skin feel almost prickly, even underneath the light fabric of her shirt. It was almost unbearable. _Isabella will be gentle_ she told herself. 

She doesn't know where she found the courage, but she turned her back and slowly peeled her shirt down. As she did, a vivid memory of the last time she had her back exposed invades her mind like a flare, causing her to want to bring the shirt back up again. Instead, she pulled the rest of it off and stood, flushed, bare and disfigured in the moonrise, with nothing but her mother’s ring hanging between her small, flat breasts, like a glimmer of hope on a string. 

Nancy knows that she is nothing much to look upon. _We use to say the midwife had thrown away the baby and kept the afterbirth. You were so unsightly, fit only for rough usage._ Quigley’s cruel laughter and stinging words swirl in her mind like a curse. And that judgement, _only good for rough service_. Only good for the kind of culls that liked to hurt and pound on young, defenseless flesh, who felt their lust like fury.

Besides her sour looks, her back carried the scars from her time as a captive of Quigley’s house and then there were the more recent disfigurements she had earned from the cat o’nine. They criss crossed in a disgusting display of cuts and welts and knotted flesh. A hideous tapestry of some of the most shameful moments in her life. 

“It’s not a pretty sight,” Nancy muttered through clenched teeth, half anger, half apology.

There was a long silence before Isabella breathed in sharply. When she spoke, her voice shook with a quiet rage.

“Why was this done to you?”

“Punishment,” Nancy bit out, her voice harsh to cover her humiliation.

“What could you have ever done to earn such… punishment?”

Nancy didn’t trust herself to speak so she kept silent, but the tears fell anyway, trailing down her face.

After a moment she heard Isabella dipping the cloth in the basin. She came close and whispered, “I am going to touch you now, is it alright? The water is cool as a soft spring rain.”

Nancy had never allowed Mags to help her with her wounds when she first got them. She struggled to use the gin Charlotte brought to try to clean them herself and had become feverish and infected because of it. Nancy paused for what seemed like either a moment or a pair of lifetimes before she finally nodded, haltingly.

The cloth was spread gently over her back… gentle touch and cool loveliness… Nancy’s head fell back and her mouth opened slightly. Isabella brought the cold cloth up to her neck and squeezed the cloth slightly so that rivulets of cool water streamed down her back and gathered in the waist of her breeches. Again and again the cloth is dipped into the basin and spread delicately over her back and neck and Nancy couldn't hold back a deep sigh of relief.

As Isabella continued in her gentle ministrations, Nancy finally began to speak.

“I was sentenced to be beaten in the streets for sedition,” she said. “After Kitty Carter’s murder and the Justice did nothing, I instigated a bit of a riot…”

“… a bit?” Isabella asked, and given the circumstances, she shouldn’t seem amused, yet it somehow comforted Nancy that she does. 

“Yeah- a fucking revolution,” she laughed before sobering again. “Or would have been. But I was nabbed. The other scars are from Quigley’s…”

Isabella didn’t say anything for a moment. Long enough for Nancy to worry what she must think of her. But then she said firmly, “You didn’t deserve such… barbarous cruelty…”

 _Oh Dove… I deserve more. Much, much more_ , Nancy thought to herself, but said nothing. It is true of course, that she didn’t deserve to be abused for the crime of being poor. She didn’t deserve such disfigurement for having the audacity to demand justice for a victim denied because of her poverty and because she possessed a used cunny. But for Charlotte’s death?

If she had just barred Pincher from Greek Street that fateful night. If she had just held her ground with Mags. If she had kept up the lie about how the fire started. If she hadn't always been so willing to go down any and every cocked up revenge scheme Mags dreamed up. If she had protected the girls more. If… if… if… if… “It’s not your fault, Nance,” Charlotte’s sweet voice still echoed inside her head. But she knew it was not true. If she had done things differently, if she had protected her better, Charlotte would still be alive. It was all her fault.

“You must have been so frightened,” Isabella’s voice called her back from her grim thoughts.

“The pain wasn’t the worst thing,” Nancy confessed. “They… ripped my shirt off in the street. Too many people could see me… Too many people were touching me… I hadn’t felt that exposed since… since…”

She shut her eyes and hot tears slipped down her face again. It was as if her shame was burning her through from the inside. She tried to focus on how cool the cloth felt against her hot skin, how soothing Isabella’s presence was, but she felt herself going numb, floating away…

When she came back to herself, she was sitting on the edge of Isabella’s bed, while Isabella rubbed some ointment into her back. It felt so good. It felt better than she deserved. It felt like forgiveness.

She grabbed Isabella’s hand in her own and pressed her lips to it. She turned to look into her eyes. They were so blue and pensive and they seemed to strike her right in the heart.

“How can you bear to touch me?" She asked. “Why don’t I- why doesn’t this repulse ya?”

She knew that Isabella disapproved when Nancy spoke ill of herself. But tonight she couldn’t help it. The events of the last year have returned her to a time before she knew how to wear her self distain with defiance, her indecency with swagger. 

Isabella looked at her with a faraway gaze. Finally her own eyes pooled with tears as she said, “Let me break this spell.”

She pressed her soft lips to each ugly scar, mixing her tears with the ointments and salves she rubbed into them. Nancy’s own tears continued to fall, but now they felt different somehow. They felt cleansing... healing. 

There is something disquieting about surviving the things you shouldn’t be able to come back from. There is something so vile about surviving when others, like Charlotte and Kitty, did not. But under Isabella’s lips and hands, she felt, just for a moment, as if the curse was lifted and the pain had been burned away. 


End file.
